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The BMW Group Future Experience is tailor-made for tomorrow

GQ Editor, Dylan Jones, and The Gadget Show’s Jason Bradbury celebrate the BMW Group's convergence of future design and intelligent technology at the opening night of the brand's interactive exhibition at The Roundhouse, Camden.

No matter how many picture galleries you click through or words you read, very little prepares you for the experience of the BMW Group’s Vision Vehicles in real life. You’ve seen the BMW’s shapeshifting bodywork, the MINI’s cloud-stored vehicle profiles, which allow you to drive “your” car wherever you are in the world, and Rolls-Royce’s vision of grand sanctuary in an autonomous age, but when you’re up close and personal, there’s a sense that these aren’t pie-in-the-sky design studies, but marks in the sand.

BMW Designer Sebastian Kroes

GQ Editor Dylan Jones, Jason Bradbury and Jake Humphrey

Installed at the opening night of the BMW Group Future Experience at The Roundhouse in Camden, London, you realise that the company’s not planning to simply build cars but design lifestyle choices that will completely change how we get from a to b. And it’s done so by creating its own vision of the future – which you can see projected in the venue’s main halls, through VR displays and even on the canapé menu – then converged its intelligent technology with future design to create something wholly new, ready for 2116.

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Future design is something GQ Editor, Dylan Jones, knows a thing or two about. Speaking at the Future Experience, he says, “These vehicles have a sense of reality about them. They reflect the generational shifts we’re seeing today.” BMW already has cars for millennials, but looking at Generation Z and beyond Jones can see a fluidity to everything. “Not just technology, travel and gender, but ownership and how we’ll preserve our environment. In design terms they hit a sweet spot and reflect my understanding of what tomorrow holds.”

Also speaking at the Future Experience’s opening night, The Gadget Show’s Jason Bradbury adds, “This looks like a tech-lover’s playground, but don’t make the assumption that these are toy cars. They’re running, driving things, and they truly have a place in our world of tomorrow. The future isn’t just tangible, but you can map it.” We know, for example, that in 2023 we’ll have a computer with the same power as the human brain. “This theory enables these cars in reality, not fantasy.”

These cars can exist not just technically but socially, adds Bradbury. “The leather in the BMW vehicle is vegan, in that it has all the properties of leather but it’s not made from an animal. Elsewhere, they’re renewable and responsibly sourced.” But through design that amplifies the standards and expectation of tomorrow’s technology, Jones says, “The cars look mind-boggling and fantastic, but like the best tailoring and the best fashion, they’re driven forward in partnership with technology, with one element not leading the other.”

To experience the future of the BMW Group, to see what tomorrow holds for our society and to get up close to its stunning Vision Vehicles from BMW, MINI and Rolls-Royce, visit The Roundhouse in Camden, London from 18-26 June.